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Book

Visiting Mackinac : 150 years of tourism at Michigan's fabled straits

Call Number

  • H 977.4923 B688 (CEN)

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Publication Information

East Lansing : Michigan State University Press, [2026]

Physical Description

xvi, 313 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Summary

"The Straits of Mackinac have been a tourist destination for more than 150 years. The story of how tourism developed on Mackinac Island and in the adjacent communities of St. Ignace and Mackinaw City is narrated in this book, with stories from the people who helped shape it. This work explores the factors that shaped this region into the tourist destination that it is today. It includes historical context of how conflicting ideas developed a seasonal tourist industry and examines how tourism at the Straits of Mackinac developed within regional and national contexts as the tourist industry boomed in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This volume also shows how the people at the Straits responded to various national trends, such as when the automobile transformed the tourist experience and when independently published travel literature painted a critical picture of the region"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents

  • The Pioneer Tourists, 1836-1861
  • Becoming a Fashionable Resort, 1870-1894
  • Making the People's Resort, 1895-1930
  • New Leaders and New Directions, 1929-1941
  • The Leadership Divided, 1941-1947
  • The Governor Charts a New Course, 1948-1961
  • The Director, the Mayor, and History, 1961-1990
  • The End of an Era, 1961-1990
  • The Beginning, 1895-1932
  • Automobile Tourism, 1912-1959
  • The More Things Change, 1960-1990.

Subjects